


Eighteen footprints in the sand

by laughingpineapple



Category: The Last Guardian (Video Game)
Genre: Found Family (of tricos), Future Fic, Gen, Mild Cuddling (tricos), Travel, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21838558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: Night scene from a long journey. The tomb was empty.
Relationships: The Boy & Trico (The Last Guardian)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Eighteen footprints in the sand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Siver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siver/gifts).



Three travellers met in a red desert, under a ruined arch. Motifs and symbols criss-crossed around the remnants of a wall and the tiles underneath, reaching out toward the dilapidated remains of a well. A beloved place once, long before their time, a sacred place heavy with stories etched in the stone. The travellers were all strangers to this land and could not read them, but they paid respects and shared their own like they shared their food and water.

“There is a tower like the one you seek,” one of them said. “They speak of it in a harbour to the East.”

“It lies out in the sea,” continued the other. “When the sky’s darker than the water, the horizon’s veil parts to show its might. Or so it goes.”

“The tower is white as snow, glimmering in the dying sunlight. Rising higher than the tallest palace, it blooms in a wide terrace kissed by the clouds.”

“A princess awaits her destiny there.”

“They say that about a lot of stories,” said the third man, who had remained silent for a while, ruffling the long grey feathers in his mantle and smoothing them out again.

“That is what a lot of people want out of their stories,” said the first. “Stranger, what do you want out of this tower of yours?”

“A destination… a mirror.”

“Don’t we all.” The second traveller stoked their bonfire – a cold curtain would soon be falling on the desert. “You speak in riddles, stranger.”

“Riddles are sharp tools, my friend,” said the third man. Across the flames, the tattoos that crowned his face painted strange, distant expressions, but the smile growing under his beard was kind, and he had a voice like a teacher, attuned to tales and explanations. “Especially when they have no answer. But strange as it may sound, I spoke in earnest. I... inherited a mirror, a long time ago. I know it comes not from my homeland nor yours, but from a white tower.”

A high-pitched whistle blew from the darkness beyond them. The third man turned to heed that call with a haste that melted into a deep fondness. “And now I must leave.”

“You follow many callings.”  
“I was chosen for that, I think.”

With those words, the man with the feathered mantle disappeared from their story, leaving them a handful of confused symbols and the kind shadow of his absence.

The man found his way back under a shroud of dark clouds. On the shores of an eroded lake, he reached again the place where his footprints had steered away from those of his companions – they would have to be more careful as they moved forward, learn to cover their tracks before they reached any civilized area. But that was a problem for a nebulous future, and in those days, the thoughts of towns and cities felt so far away, a flight of fancy wilder than any white tower whose terrace reached the sky. For that night, the easy trail was a blessing. He followed the unruly tracks by the shore and onto colossal stairs that led inside the walls of a stone ark. His companions always did like vast ruins to nest in, and dark, mossy walls were growing on him, too. He patted a black pillar with fondness, feeling part of its history for a night.

The ancient remains were peaceful, disturbed only by a regular, distant rustling. At the far end of the bulkhead, where the stone walls curved into a recess under the ark’s bow, his four companions were curled up against each other for the night’s sleep. Moonlight seeped in for a moment and he could see them clearly, Three and Four tucked under Two’s wings, One scratching his ears against the wall (names were never his forte. When he came back to the Valley, and calling “Trico” suddenly got him not one but four sets of ears rising to attention, he took to counting them, starting from his old friend and down to the youngest cub).

“Greetings, friends. Good news, I hope. We are going to the East,” he said, feebly, so as not to wake up the young ones.

Finding his own spot under One’s wing like an ungrown pup, patting his friend’s chest, letting the family know that they were all together again, the man hummed a little song under his breath and let the day’s sleep catch up with him.

A strange wind blew against the ark that night. It was a strange land, this expanse past the Valley. But not a bad one, filled with good clay and good shrubs. His thoughts slipped back down the road until they found a memory, or a dream.

It felt like a memory, but its edges slipped and blurred, filtered through an unclear mirror. Not the mirror he still carried with himself, but the watery surface they left behind and which kept trembling in his dreams – and he reached back. He always reached back there. When, months earlier, he had left his village behind and had followed his calling back to the Valley and to his old friend, he had made his way back through the caves to reach that place again, and he had come back, to the mirror and to that white room which felt like a wound in the weaving of the world. Four had followed him inside with innocent curiosity, sticking her head through the fissure and wriggling her body until it squeezed through (she almost got stuck on her way out and licked dust and rocks out of her feathers for days, but that is another story, and rests outside the dream).

The place was as the man remembered it from his youth. A white tomb. Soft edges, porous stone. Inscriptions no boy could hope to read, and no man, either – decades spent searching and sharing knowledge crashed against those dots and squares. A sarcophagus fit for a king. A water pool, ankles-deep (a mirror).

Together, man and trico had faced the sarcophagus. As they edged closer, the memory rippled – there were no answers. In the dream, or in the memory, they could feel an old heartbeat give out as the Valley fell into disrepair. In the dream, or in the memory, the young trico’s strength was enough to pry open that strange white stone and set the broken lid aside to find out that at the end of this circle, these questions, this story… there was nothing inside. There were no answers. Their heartbeats rose and drummed on the water pool’s surface and all the servants and children and forges and bridges and all the pain they’d left at the top of the tower were all empty. Generations of men and tricos offered before an empty grave. Four howled, then, or he wished she did.

Yet the pool’s dark water still glimmered in the cold air, still heavy with secrets, still deep beyond its basin. If only they could cross to the other side of that surface, surely they would find… the memory rippled again, uncertain now, blurred at the edges, and the man dreamt of stone and grey feathers until sunrise.

He woke up fending off Three’s inquisitive snout, getting licked and gently headbutted as had become their routine, and soon their little caravan went back to the road, across the red desert, toward another white tower, another mirror, perhaps distant answers.


End file.
